These are the oldest in my collection of CD-R's, they where burnt by a friend of mine in Argentina & I now have them in Australia they where stored in a humid environment while in Argentina & a hot environment while in Australia (never exposed to sunlight though) & they have no scratches (flawless). The only thing they have in common is they all have gold dye.

I've always got much better (though not prerfect) results with gold CDRs than silver.The fact that my silver CDR got yellow proves that there was some SO2 attacking them, with light. If I'm not mistaken, silver turns yellow because of sulfur (can anyone confirm ?), and I've learned in school that silver can't turn yellow without light. If my problems, or a part of them, come from the metal, then keeping them in the dark would have improved their lifetime significantly.

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yes, if they really use Gold particles/surface for the pressing, it will be chemically more stable than compared to a silver surface.

Silver (Ag) can be attacked/oxidized by Sulfur, S. The result would be Silversulfid, something black, maybe in low concentrations/thin films on surfaces 'yellow-brownish'.

To initiate a chemical reaction, you need often somehow a starter, to overcome a certain energy barrier, which you could overcome in a lot reactions by light, as sunlight contains UV wavelengths, which are quite powerful.

If I think of CD-R with organic compounds layers for the data, which are written/burned by our CD-writer lasers, then you know immediately, that any sunlight, maybe other light sources, too, are poison to CD-R.

I've always got much better (though not prerfect) results with gold CDRs than silver.The fact that my silver CDR got yellow proves that there was some SO2 attacking them, with light. If I'm not mistaken, silver turns yellow because of sulfur (can anyone confirm ?), and I've learned in school that silver can't turn yellow without light. If my problems, or a part of them, come from the metal, then keeping them in the dark would have improved their lifetime significantly.

There are four metals that are inert to polycarbonate and sufficiently reflective to be used as a reflective layer. These are gold, silver, copper, and aluminum. Aluminum is the most cost-efficient and most widely used for prerecorded pressed discs, but most CD-R discs use gold or silver because of their greater reflectivity. Since the translucent dye polymer layer reduces the amount of laser light that is reflected back from the disc, a highly reflective metal is desirable.

I was just asking, because silver sulfide (Ag2S) will turn black, not yellow - just try to eat an egg with a silver spoon. Silver Sulfite (AgSO3), the most probable silver/sulphur combination in presence of SO2 might be of yellow colour but cannot be created without the presence of water (air humidity, along with the fact that polycarbonate can take up water up to 1,5 mass percent might be sufficient) to create H2SO3 wich might then corrode silver ...

Sony should be in Highest quality brands not Low quality brands.i use High Speed Sony CD-RW (650 MB 4x-10x) and never have problems with them

one of them, i erase it and rewrite on it more than 25 times and it is still working perfectly

these are very good :Kodak CD-RFujifilm CD-R 80 Verbatim

maxell are crap

my burner is YAMAHA CRW2100E 16x10x40

RW is a whole other beast than -R. I think you will find that most people here use -r, and mostly for audio. And of the brans you listed, with the exeption of Kodak, they could be anything. You need the ATIP info.

QUOTE (Ashed @ Sep 23 2004, 11:41 PM)

What about black CD-R's? Are they better than the gold ones?

SHort answer. No. Might be better in some older readers, but in generally have lower reflectivity and are usually CMC.

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"You can fight without ever winning, but never win without a fight." Neil Peart 'Resist'

I can simply explain why,The first Sony Manufactured CD-R I used is "Sony 700MB/80min Supremas" Very bad CD-Rmy writer Artec WRR-52 refuses to write more than 74min on this media, and the speed is restircted to 40X and below

Sony CD-RW 4x-10x....650MB, are you sure they are sony?,i think they are rebranded Mitsubishi disc, that's why they are good.Almost all the 650MB CD-RW are Mitsubishi... I don't see any other manufacturer produce 650MB CDRW.

Verbatim's CD-R are marginal to good CD-R"DataLifePlus (Azo)" are the best of Verbatim, they use Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. dye"Datalife Pastel" are the best of verbatim too! they are Taiyo Yuden

DataLife/Valulife........Be careful! they are CMC!

I've seen many bad reports about CMC, but i found out that Imation CMC are quite good!

It depends if they are Datalife Plus Super Azo or Datalife Plus Metal Azo. Metal Azo is the old traditional dark blue Verbatim. Super Azo are the new ones optimized for high speed. However, they have problems at... high speed !

Black CDRs can be silver or gold. It's the plastic that is black. The silver ones that I got, from HiSpace, were manufactured by MPO. They had some C2 errors right after burning and quickly died. I don't remember who manufactred the Memorex ones, but for me they were worse.

Hi,after I occasionally found this thread, I decided to join the party:

Recently I have reburned some 4+ year old CD-Rs due to read errors. I kept the originals though. So I fired up CDRidentifier and here are the results: (They fit quite nicely with the list at the beginning)

The worst of all CDs with lots of C2 and quite some CU errors was... CMC Magnetics (guessed that? )Next worst was LeadData, directly followed by AMS Technologies (never heard of them). Those AMS discs were sold under the Tevion/Lifetec brand in german supermarket chain ALDI.Another disk I backed up (more out of fear that all my old CDs are crap now) was a Ritek but it was still perfectly readable (6,3avg/40max C1,no C2 or CU).

All discs (except one) were burnt with an old trusty PX-820i SCSI burner. They were stored in jewelcases (and therefore dark) under normal environmental conditions (not like Pio's )

Another (near) dead CD-R, it contained an Audio-CD. It still plays in the stand anlone player, has big problems any computer drive.Lots of C2 errors in Nero Speedtest This was a Traxdata Silver (80min) burned end of 1999ATIP info from diskATIP start of lead out: 79:59:74 (sector: 359999)Manufacturer code: 97 31 00 - Ritek Co. (Type: 0)

All of them read back with very few C1 errors (on both LiteOn and Plextor drives) and no c2 errors at all.

So, using quality media, it is possible to get to the 10 year mark with data in tact, if the media is stored/handled properly.

Halcyon, do you think you could provide some scans?

I would attribute their long life due to the gold contained, not the media brand. If you check my list of old CD-R's scans I have a low quality brand (Princo) & it has lasted 7 years with no C2 errors.

What I would really like to see is 10+ years from non gold Kodak media, as I remember silver Kodak's where reported to be troublesome, that's why I bumped Kodak down on the quality rating list.

yep. The Sony ones suck too. For instance, the Sony Supremas 700MB are not useable for Data stored after the 74 Minutes mark...I burned some 690 MB rar archive on it and right after burning the archive was already corrupt...how can they sell such CD's as 700MB blanks? That's fraud...

This post has been edited by Jojo: Mar 10 2005, 19:33

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--alt-presets are there for a reason! These other switches DO NOT work better than it, trust me on this.LAME + Joint Stereo doesn't destroy 'Stereo'